


Ghosts and Pits and Broken Things

by longnoideatime



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, problem drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:40:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longnoideatime/pseuds/longnoideatime
Summary: AU where Dick finds Mac huddled in the hotel room at the end of S2 before Veronica does. This work deals with the aftermath of Cassidy's death and Dick and Mac trying to keep functioning. *Trigger warning* How Cassidy behaved towards Mac is treated as an assault. I don't want anyone to be unprepared for that, please read tags for other potential triggers. M for language and subject currently.
Relationships: Dick Casablancas/Cindy "Mac" Mackenzie
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> This began as two fics I smushed together and never finished, so be gentle. Or don't. This is the internet.

The music was loud in Logan's suite the party after graduation, the bass thudding in Dick's eardrums, deep enough he could almost feel it vibrating in his chest cavity, people pressed in against the walls. Veronica didn't make faces like that. Dick barely knew her beyond the surface, and even he knew that. He didn't know what made him look for his brother after she left, the instinct born with a plastic cup in his hand as he stood still in the middle of the crowd, still smirking as he watched Veronica force her way through the press of people though he was no longer amused, something dark and urgent taking shape beneath his ribs. It wasn't like they had the sort of relationship where he looked out for Beav, his little brother usually the butt of their interactions. And it wasn't like he gave a shit about whatever "important" trouble Veronica Mars had pulled out of her ass this week. But he had to admit she was right a disturbing amount of the time. And he would have been lying if he said she'd never given him a fear boner. Even without some concrete reason to do so, he knocked back the rest of his beer, his eyes fixed on the door, body moving on autopilot as he deftly navigated through the press of bodies, his party going experience finally coming in handy. And they said it was useless.

Beaver had used his name to check in, his little brother too young without borrowing his ID, something that he couldn't remember anymore why he'd found funny as he waited impatiently for the woman behind the desk to give him a keycard. He ran his hands through his hair in the elevator, eyeing himself in the reflective surface of the interior as it moved too slowly up floors; Dick didn't have a lot of experience fidgeting, his usual movements confident and lazily unhurried. He was the sort of person who took up the entirety of a couch when he sat, not because of his height, but simply because of the way his limbs seemed naturally to spread in all directions with little regard to the space others might wish to occupy. The doors  _ dinged  _ and he found himself hurrying through the opening, counting room numbers as his footsteps were absorbed by the lush carpeting in the halls, the world gone silent, like after an explosion when your ears were ringing with one single loud tone. He didn't knock, didn't pause when he found the door, not that he was particularly inclined to politeness even in his better moments, but he would think on it later when the hush that had settled over his mind receded, muffling his thoughts as instinct moved him forward.

He threw open the door, Mac's head jerking up from where she huddled against the wall, her knees drawn to her chest. She was a quiet girl, even in the expressions that flashed across her face, and he wasn't astute enough to guess what the look dripping from her face now meant about her feelings at his presence. Her movement was the first thing he saw, but as his eyes settled the room came into focus, the bed stripped completely of its comforter and sheets, the open bathroom door with the light still left on and the shower curtain loops hanging empty as he stood numbly in the doorway. He wanted to turn and walk away, didn't want to see this, didn't want to think about Sally and his brother and sundry other warning signs, but the tears gathered in the corners of Mac's eyes caught the light, glittering, and suddenly he was looking at her when he hadn't meant to, her eyes meeting and holding his. He'd liked the way she looked earlier at the party with his brother, the pink in her hair and the way her tits looked in her dress, but it was impossible now to see anything about her but her expression. He swallowed and moved to the minibar, the door clicking softly shut behind him nearly making him flinch. He unscrewed one bottle without looking at the label and swallowed it, hardly tasting whatever was inside on his tongue before it burned down his throat. He swallowed a second before grabbing a third and fourth and walking to where she sat, her body drawn so tightly together he could see her half sitting on her heels as she hugged her knees to her chest. He didn't think he'd ever realised before how small she was, the narrow space she'd fit herself into between the bed and the nightstand throwing it into sharp relief.

Dick knelt, slightly unsteady from all he'd already had to drink as he balanced on the balls of his feet, before holding one of the bottles out to her. There were faint smudges of eyeliner beneath her eyes from the shower she'd taken, her hair still wet. He realised his brother hadn't left her even a towel, not that it seemed like someone like her could've worn that little outside the room. He didn't know why it was this lack of so much as a towel that made his own eyes prickle with heat, alcohol loosening his tear ducts, but he unscrewed the bottle she hadn't reached for and drank that too, easing the sudden tightness in his throat, using the opportunity to look away from her as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"He took my clothes," she said, and against his will the waver in her voice made him meet her eyes again, the blue genuinely searching as they flicked between his. "He took everything. Why?"

'He took everything', she'd said. He didn't even want to know what that meant. He wasn't the person meant to hear this. His thoughts were slow and sluggish, the alcohol working its way through his system. He reached out, not sure what to do, his hand hovering in the air over her arm, and she sniffed and looked away. Probably the fact that he wanted to touch her was a clear sign that he shouldn't have.

"Beav's not--" He tried, but then he didn't know what he'd meant to say. Not what? Normal? Worth it? Safe? He forgot sometimes, what his brother was capable of: it was easy the way he usually thought of Beaver, as the kid he and his dad laughed at when either one of them had managed to make him cry. "You guys wouldn't have worked out anyway," he finished lamely, realising his words had started to slur.

The way she looked at him was like a child being insulted by an adult, a mix of reproach and questioning if what was said was true, and he realised what it'd sounded like when he'd spoken. He wasn't used to thinking about her, didn't want to start, but he felt strangely responsible for what had happened to her. He uncapped the fourth bottle and moved to knock it back down his throat as quickly as the others, but her hand reached for his on its journey to his mouth, and he let her take the bottle from his fingers, noticing how much smaller than his hers were. He liked taller girls with big tits, didn't think he'd ever slept with someone as small as she was. But then his brother was little too, and she was  _ his  _ girlfriend, not his own. He couldn't imagine her doing anything to bring this on, and his brain slowly began to chug.  _ Why?  _ she'd asked. He felt something stirring in his stomach, some feeling of dread as he considered what could be big enough Cassidy would do this, particularly to her. Where? his thoughts returned, his heart beginning to pick up in his chest. She coughed after drinking the liquor and he couldn't help but be distracted by the way her face scrunched cutely at the burn. Maybe the reason he found her so interesting was because she loved Cassidy, and he couldn't have had her if he'd wanted her, her disdain for him and devotion to his weak, twisted little brother potent enough he sometimes thought he could almost see it floating in the air.

The door opened again behind them and he reached for her unthinkingly, pulling her into his side; he could feel how cold her skin was from not drying herself off after getting out of the shower through the curtain wrapped around her, the ridges of her spine prominent beneath his hand; but it was Veronica who opened the door, not Beaver, and Dick stood as she made her way to Mac, his clothes slipping through the grasp she had on them, Logan and a hotel employee standing at the door, Logan looking at him like...

"Dude, what happened?" he asked, trying to pretend to be normal, and unaffected.

"Let's go outside, man," Logan said, and Dick felt Veronica and Mac looking at him from the floor.

***

Mac was aware she was in shock. Mostly because she kept thinking it to herself:  _ You're in shock _ . Veronica was talking to the sheriff, who'd been talking to her, but now he'd stopped, and her wet hair was making her shiver and tremble all over, like the stray dog her little brother had once tried to coax inside their house. Or maybe she was just shivering and trembling all over, and her hair had nothing to do with it. Sheriff's deputies swarmed on the upper floors of the building; in the room where Aaron Echolls' body had been discovered, on the roof, red and blue lights flashing from outside the glass doors of the Neptune Grand Lobby as they buzzed around the spot he'd landed. Strange how they didn't make her feel any safer. 

Someone was making inhuman noises amongst the rush of tan suited activity, deep heaving sounds that managed to echo in the decidedly uncathedral-like space, and for a moment her mind circled the words "and then she realised it was her". But it was Dick, seated on one of the lobby sofas and curled into himself like the sobs wracking his chest made it impossible for him to hold himself upright. Mac had no idea where Logan had disappeared to. Before tonight Mac would've said that the day she saw Dick Casablancas cry was the day hell had frozen over; maybe that was the most logical explanation for all this. Or maybe he was just drunk. The lights seemed almost hypnotic, outside where Cassidy was, waiting to explain, and Mac found herself taking a step forward, Veronica's eyes lasering to her so quickly there was little doubt she'd been half watching all along. Mac's footsteps veered towards the couches with all the subtlety of a dog pretending not to have been nosing after food left on the table. She sat next to Dick on the couch, her body drawn tightly together.

From this close she could feel the way the animal noises wrenching their way from his throat shook the couch. It occurred to her in a distant and detached sort of way that maybe the reason Dick didn't know how to cry like a normal human was that he'd never done it before. Mac's eyes flicked again to the doors, but she felt Veronica looking at her as soon as she did. She couldn't shake the certainty that if she was outside, all of this would begin to make sense again. Cassidy would be standing there next to the splatter unharmed, and the seams of hell that had managed to merge with the earth would be shuttering themselves. Instead she realised Dick was lilting towards her, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, staring unseeingly at a far spot on the wall as he obligingly buried his head against her chest, like he'd just been waiting all along for her to offer him comfort. It was as likely as anything else. She ran her hand softly up and down his broad back, her body seeming to absorb and resonate with the sound of his crying, his arms clutching at her like she was all that was anchoring him to the ground, when her own grip on reality seemed in this moment so tenuous.


	2. The Past

The party pig was nearly empty when he saw her on the balcony, and it didn't really matter to him if that was the reason he opened the door, or if it was the rejection of seemingly every other girl in school numbing him to hers. She'd ditched the shawl and gloves he'd first seen her in the elevator with, her cheeks still flushed with the heat of so many people despite however long she'd been standing in the slightly cooler night air, Logan's suite packed full of more people than hotel management would've allowed after V Mars had passed around the invitation. It was even a little more crowded than he preferred at this late point in the night, the whole thing uncomfortably like those gross British fish in a can. He wasn't sure exactly what had kept people off the balcony but he didn't give a shit about that either, as long as they continued to keep their distance. It was unusual that relief from a crush of people at a party made his shoulders feel so happy and loose, the music slamming in waves against his back while the cool air swirled gently against his front. She looked like some kind of picture, against the stars in her red dress.

Dick liked when girls wore red, even if her outfit was a little more gothic than he usually went for, and his eyes roved over her regretfully as he lingered in the balcony doorway, considering the missed opportunity of being close enough to know what her hair smelled like if he'd stood next to her in the elevator. He towered over her date, and it didn't occur to him to wonder if she would've thought that was a bad thing as he left off leaning in the doorway and went to stand next to her, towering over her too. She didn't look over at him, somehow as dismissive as always when he knew she wasn't dating Beav anymore. He used to listen to them make out on Beaver's bed through the wall his room shared with his brother's, and the one time she'd gotten frustrated with how far they didn't go during the four months they'd been dating stuck in his memory. He'd assumed she was too shy to want sex, or say she wanted sex before then, amused at how frustrated his virgin little brother must've been at their  _ tender kisses _ , but the knowledge that she was the one needy and unsatisfied had made him inexplicably harden in his shorts. He was drunk enough now that the memory of the same made him stiffen slightly in his tux slacks, his skin flushing hot with alcohol and arousal. 

"Aren't you going to offer me some of your hog?" she asked, her low, sarcastic voice coming enough out of left field he didn't immediately realise what she was talking about. It didn't help the state of his pants, but she still hadn't looked at him once so he figured it didn't matter as much as the other things didn't matter. He probably wouldn't have been embarrassed even if he hadn't been this drunk.

He tilted the party pig so there was alcohol where the straw began inside the plastic before offering her the other end, and she turned now, not meeting his eyes, to grasp the straw between her delicate fingers and take a long drink.

"Your date not going as planned?" He didn't know how he refrained from making a joke about how she was obviously hard on the rebound if she was dating that sophomore Butters. It might've been because his brain was working too sluggishly to figure out the right words.

When the straw was just making that dumb sucking straw sound, she let it go and pushed her hair out of her face. "Veronica sold me to Butters."

His smile came quick and easy, and he didn't catch how she seemed to wonder at its presence for a split second. "Sold you? Where do I get in line?"

She huffed a short laugh through her nose. "The back."

He wanted to kiss her, his eyes tracing over her face in the soft blue light, but in the silence that was quickly taking shape she seemed to be able to read his intentions, her face flashing through confusion, disbelief, and nerves in quick succession. "I have to go back to the prom," she said.

He turned to the view of Neptune laid out beyond the glass railing. "Yeah. Later, Ghostworld."


	3. Three

The breeze blew Mac's dark hair across her face as she stood over Dick's body lying prone on the quad, the trees rustling gently, the sun shining brightly. She didn't know why he'd chosen a union jack speedo, his blonde surfer look as New Americana as it came. Or maybe the frat bros trickling laughingly towards them had picked it out. She reached out a hand to him he didn't take, staring at it, not looking away until the first of his brothers reached him and she watched him instantly snap out of whatever seeing her had inspired, a wide smile on his face as he pretended she didn't exist, a blank space between frat brothers slowly jostled out of the way. She looked back only once as she walked to class, but he'd been swallowed amongst the circle of boys surrounding him.

Mac spent the day carefully maneuvering herself to draw as little attention as possible; she picked seats in the last row of all of her classes, where her back wasn't left exposed, near the exits, her eyes roving quietly over the play of faces. She'd felt like she didn't belong before, in her family, in her school, but she'd never felt such an unbearable quiet take over her life, like her lips were slowly fusing together. This was what Cassidy had left behind. She was grateful to be in her dorm again at the end of the day, tension dropping from her shoulders, the press of people that had been at the concert slowly exhausting her nerves, Parker still being out with the band another small blessing. She missed her room at home, but she'd wanted to be on her own more than she'd wanted to be left alone, and if Parker kept up the partying they hardly had to see each other anyway. Oddly enough it was her moments by herself where she felt less like she'd somehow lost the ability to effect noise, being by herself erasing the sense of pressure she felt almost everywhere else. Her therapist said feeling like she couldn't speak was about control and the loss of it. Knowing that did little to dispel the feeling itself.

She'd never been much of a sleeper, able to subsist on a few hours every night and unable to catch many more, but since Cassidy the ability had begun to work against her, the sleep she could find troubled, the hours she spent lying on her back staring at the ceiling lengthening, the number of nights she went without sleep entirely increasing. She half thought she'd begun to hallucinate when she heard Dick's voice, that all of her thoughts and worries had somehow forced his image to appear, but when she threw open the door there he was, drunk, tousled and untidy like a lost child.

He didn't know why it made him angry when she came to the door instead of Parker, the words dying on his lips as he met her stare, wide-eyed although he got the feeling she'd recognised his voice before opening it. Her pajamas weren't at all skimpy, as he could vaguely remember once imagining, though even in whatever fantasy he'd momentarily entertained he'd quickly realised she wouldn't dress like he'd pictured, something about the genericness of his imagination doing her a disservice, despite his never having cared about out of character details in his sex fantasies before. He didn't know why she had to be so muted in her reactions, her face inscrutable to him; how the fuck was he supposed to understand her? Did she remember the same things he did whenever he saw her again? He thought back to her offering him her hand in the quad. He didn't think he wanted to see her, the way she'd been on the night his brother died superimposed on his memory. His mind caught briefly on that night before the shower curtain, and her breasts against the edge of her neckline before he brushed it away.

"My little brother never cared about you, y'know? You were just his beard. Why do you think he left you like that?"

She looked wounded again, not in the same way she had that night but the base of the expression was the same, and he looked away. He'd wanted to wound her, didn't want to be near her, but he was inadvertently reminded instead. He didn't want to know what she would've said if he hadn't gotten thrown out, but he looked behind himself through the doors at the end of the hall and she lingered in her doorway, the expression on her face almost... disappointed. It was easy to write off as the product of drunken wishful thinking.

She watched from her doorway as he left, like he hadn't just said something someone else might've tasered him for. Someone with pixie spy magic. She closed the door, sat on her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest in the darkness, her blankets scattered and warm around her. She should've tucked herself beneath them, gone back to sleep. Dick wasn't anything to her. He'd been an asshole, back when she might've cared that he was Cassidy's brother, and there was no reason for her to start cherishing their connection now that Cassidy was both dead and his memory corrupted. She sometimes wondered what would've happened if he'd managed to kill Veronica, silence the whole thing, her skin crawling. Would she have forgiven him for leaving her in the hotel room the way he had? She was aware that love made her stupid, and that a chance existed that she would've. It made her sick to her stomach. But Dick, knowing that Beaver had left her like that... maybe it would've made her stronger, the feeling that someone was watching how she let herself be treated, though she almost snorted at the idea that he would give half a shit. 

She saw him trip over nothing and fall flat on his face coming out of the cafeteria the next morning, and it was despite who he was that she walked over after her initial hesitation, not because of it. She didn't bother offering to help him up this time, her face expressionless as she watched him painstakingly climb back to his feet. His face looked bad enough she winced as she stopped in front of him. "Are you alright?"

He didn't say anything, staring off to one side like that was going to make her move out of his way.

"Let me take you to the health center." Mac tried to smile reassuringly, or comfortingly, or whatever, but she didn't think it entirely worked.

"Is the nurse hot?" It was intentional, the douchebaggery. This time, at least. His trying to pick a fight with her was less annoying than when he was actually mocking her.

"I don't know. I don't get into fisticuffs with strangers."

" _ 'Fisticuffs' _ ?" He followed her when she started walking, though.

Mac sat next to him cautiously on the plastic doctor's examination cot-thing that took up most of the small room, space between them carefully cultivated, the bag of ice on Dick's eye creating a natural barrier so they didn't have to keep looking at each other. She found that continually being in the same vicinity as Dick, and only Dick, felt a little like they were on the verge of summoning a ghost, but she would've peeled her face off before asking if Dick felt the same thing.

"Can I ask you something?"

He didn't really answer, except to tense, next to her.

Mac asked anyway. "What did Cassidy mean when he told you to 'remember Sally'?"

"Sally was a dog I had when we were kids. Beav killed it after I did something to piss him off."

Hanging around Dick was a bad idea. It didn't make her feel any better, and now she felt like she might throw up. He'd been right to want to avoid her. Mac caught him looking at her from his good eye, his face sharp with a kind of I-told-you-so flavored amusement.

"Do you have to go?" He was giving her an out. A slightly taunting out, but it was still an out.

"No," Mac replied, childishly stubborn, like he hadn't just caught sight of her stricken face. 


	4. Every Corner

Mac focused carefully on her breathing, trying to pretend she didn't feel the creepy guy in her Comm class leering at her. She needed to get out-- She needed-- She needed--

"Ghostworld!"

Mac opened her eyes. Dick. Drunk, mildly. Was he gone? She needed to know if he was gone. If he'd stopped looking at her like he was only waiting until everyone'd gone.

"Sit!" Mac ordered nervously, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, trying to make it the kind of command "fun" girls gave that seemed so easily obeyed. Her smile was weak and quiet, and her palm seemed too loud when it smacked the seat.

Please, let Dick make him leave her alone. Mac almost snorted at herself. When had Dick become the lesser of two evils? At least she knew him, knew him enough to think he probably wasn't... probably wasn't... But then again his brother had been.

He sat, and Mac breathed a quiet sigh of relief, too scared to look over her shoulder and check for herself, unwilling to trust Dick to look. Or was she unwilling to trust him to look and not ask questions? No, that was silly. Dick wouldn't give a damn about her reasons. She held herself tensely through the entire lecture, trying not to let it get to her, trying to pretend she was fine, trying, trying, trying. The world was filled with so much trying these days. She didn't understand how everyone else wasn't tired of it too.

Dick was.

The thought came to her suddenly, unbidden. Dick was tired of trying.

Then Dick gagged, and stumbling fled into the hallway, people moving their legs and bags out of his way like he was Moses or Jesus and they were a body of water. Mac raised her hand, volunteered to go check on him, bring him his things. Barely any time into the semester and she and the professor both knew she was going to ace this course; he nodded, clearly not expecting her back. Which was mostly what Mac was hoping for.

He was heaving into a trashcan when she escaped the eyes she felt tracking her hungrily, bursting into the hallway only slightly less urgently than Dick had but steadier on her own two feet. Mac waited awkwardly at his back, not willing to touch him and soothe or offer comfort at the steep price of her own. When he wiped his mouth and stood, he laughed, weirdly bitterly at seeing her. She didn't know he was capable of something as complex as bitterness.

"You stalking me or something?" California surfer boy hair, California surfer boy inflection in his speech.

"I needed to leave." She doesn't remind him that he's the one who started talking to her today, because "Ghostworld" isn't what you say when you really want to start a conversation with someone.

" _ You're _ cutting class?"

It's amazing he doesn't see it on her. It's all she sees on herself. Even if he does wear it more openly, he should still be able to see it _. Please get me out of here. Please, take me away from here _ . But Dick’s in no position to save anyone, not even himself. She wonders briefly if he ever has been.

"Are you leaving campus?" Mac asked instead. She couldn't decide if it was better to be someplace Cassidy'd never been, or better to be someplace He had. One brought ghosts of what might've been, and the other just brought ghosts.

Dick looked at her speculatively, and his thoughtful face was less constipated than she would've anticipated. "I'm going to the house. You remember it, right? You used to swing by all the time."

Mac swallowed, but this was a battle she could win. She held her chin up higher, and Dick seemed surprised at her response, but led the way down to his car in the parking lot anyway.

He took a drink from a flask in the driver's seat, and this was 2:00 PM, and this was illegal, and this was something she didn't care about right now. Wasn't it?

"I'll drive," she said, in case it was and because even if it wasn't, fighting against the urge to fling herself headfirst down a flight of stairs was something her therapist encouraged, and the more sane parts of her did as well. And you're supposed to listen to yourself, right? Herself picked a mass murderer and never knew a thing. Herself wanted to empty her stomach over and over again when it considered that flirty conversation they’d had about who was smarter. Herself sucked sometimes.

He gave her a dark look, like she was judging him, casting aspersions. Or maybe just like she took his flask away. But he got out of the car, flask in hand, and she slid over the console because she didn't want to have to brush by him when she walked around.

Behind the wheel, she got the feeling that she could go anywhere. She could make his car take her anywhere. But where would she go that would ever make her any better? They'd still be watching her wherever she went, boys with eyes like the ones he must've given Veronica. Boys with eyes like the ones he must've made when he pushed the button. With the eyes he'd made at her. And suddenly, so suddenly, because she never saw change coming and everything was sudden, Mac realized she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe here in this car with Dick, and her chest hurt like she was going to die. She was going to die. She was probably going to take him with her, since she was driving.

Horns blared, and Dick's hands were on the wheel while she was desperately sucking air into her lungs, but her throat felt like there was a trap door in it and it kept dropping out, taking all the oxygen with it, and there was never enough. Nothing was ever enough.

"Hey!" he said, and he sounded pissed, so pissed, but Mac couldn'tthinkcouldn'tbreathe, neededhelppleasehelpme.

His skin made contact with hers, and she jerked away, her feet slamming on the pedals all at once, the car shuddering and jerking nearly as violently as she did. Horns blared again.

Pleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon'tpleasedon't. Please don't.

"MAC!"

Her throat burned, and her chest heaved. She was leaning out the car door, and the tears that streaked down her face from the force of her vomiting didn't obscure the fact that her prayer, her litany, had been said out loud. If she was a different type of person, how much she didn't want to deal with this would spring her from her seat, and she would run until she couldn't anymore. Instead she wiped her eyes, and quietly straightened in the seat. He could see it now. She could see him take it in from the corner of her eye as she started the car again. She was just as fucked up as him. Why did she ever think that was something she wanted him to see on her?


	5. Underwater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Mac continue their hang from Ch 4. This is the newest chapter for this thing, and I realised belatedly the tense is different from the rest of the fic. Sorry!

The house, for better or for worse, is different. Structurally, she can’t find a minute detail that'd been changed in the months since she was last there. In reality, it was sad and faded and empty, afflicted by the same disease she was. They were. Today is a bad day. 

Normally she's sharper, and self deprecating humor is still humor. Today everything's a fragment that just wants to cut her to ribbons. _ Let me out _ .

She follows him up the walkway and he fumbles through his keys on the top step leading not to his grand front door but a more modest side entrance, looking for the right one. She can almost see the pool from here, and that is where she'd rather be than inside, breathing stale air. Because the air is stale and hungry outside. So it has to be a gaping, sucking maw inside, one that will try to twist her inside out. It has to taste like nine people dead, and all the things taken away from the survivors. She doesn't ask for permission or company, and his head turns only when it catches her movement past him, her footsteps as afraid to disturb the sweltering silence as she is.

Mac sets her book bag down on one of the plush lounge chairs, sitting cross legged at the edge of the blue water that is a lie, because pool water is never the blue that it wants to pretend it is. Her heart when it pulses, beats, breaks in her chest seems to be telling her to call someone. Anyone. Probably her therapist.  _ A  _ therapist. Because Dick should scare her. And numbness-- numbness just makes her want to jump.

She hears him walk up behind her, holds her breath. He walks to the edge of the pool and falls over, like Bowie in Labyrinth with the endless staircases, a great big smack of a flop. She flinches both in sympathy and when the water lands on her. It's kind of cold, but she guesses if you're used to the Pacific Ocean...

Dick surfaces, shakes his floppy blonde hair like a dog shakes its wet fur. He holds up his uncapped flask, and seems disappointed to find it filled with pool water. At this rate, she's amazed he hasn't found a way to just swim in alcohol. His flip flops float to the surface of the pool, and she looks over her shoulder, a little to look away from him, a little to see if he at least kept his phone dry. He did. It's a few feet past his keys.

"So why have you been following me around?"

She has to turn back to him now, but it's a struggle because does she really want to? At least she can't see Cassidy in his face. He just elicits memories, but everything does that on her bad days.

"I haven't." The denial is empty. Rote. But she knows what he means and she doesn't have a reason to give him. Because she's fractured and cracking and he is too? She wants to save them? Or him to save her? Because she needs to know? That Cassidy cared? That Cassidy was real? That someone else hurts like she does because,  _ fuck _ , she cannot be the only one? Why  _ have  _ you been following him around, Mac? Because you feel like it?

"What'd my brother do to you in that hotel room?" She cuts her eyes at him sharply, but Dick Casablancas isn't looking. He floats fully clothed in the lying blue water, looking up at the sky so casually, like the answer to that question isn't the very thing that defines her existence. Like he deserves it. Like it's nothing to give away. Maybe if she pretends it's nothing too, eventually it'll go away. That's her usual strategy, but it doesn't account for days like today when making it nothing is so far beyond her she can't even remember how she starts usually. She doesn't want to be the girl in the hotel room, shivering in a shower curtain, but it's worse to be her and be surrounded by people who don't know and can see something wrong and jagged with her edges. Maybe that's why she's following him around.

She marvels at the way his airhead floats, while he seems to be pulled down by his bathing suit area. Dick, in a nutshell. "It must’ve been really bad," he says, and his words slur a little. He doesn’t say the word “rape” and she wonders if he’s afraid of it; she wonders if he has a reason to be, what he’s done. 

"Why should I tell you?" she asks, fighting her way out of the foggy clouds crouching on little tiger feet within her mind. Focus on the moment, Mackenzie. Ovary up, et cetera, et cetera.

He shrugs, but then his head starts to sink and Dick lets it. He goes beneath the water, and she watches him sit on the pool floor before standing, pulling her shoes off her feet. If she takes her clothes off now, she'll have  _ taken them off now _ , but if she doesn't the only option left to her is probably something from Kendall Casablancas's wardrobe. Both options are equally terrifying. Dick still hasn't come up, and she can see he's moved beneath a ladder now, using the bottom rungs to hold himself under. She takes off her pants and the top layer of her shirts and dives in, her ears popping as she nears the bottom of twelve feet, her hair streaming behind her. When she was a little girl, she always felt like a mermaid with her hair like that. The sunlight is weak on the deck, but it filters down anyway, ripples across the bottom as she uses her hands to stay down, despite her feet falling, trailing up.

Mac has never liked the water. When she was a kid her parents would make a big production out of spending a day at the beach; they’d carefully pack a cooler and their cheap, colourful folding chairs, and all of them would pile into their car and spend the whole day on the sand. Her mother would swim and play in the waves, and her father would sleep in the sun, and she would lay on her towel trying not to get grains of sand between the pages of her library books. Dick looks at her, little bubbles trailing from his nose. Nobody could look at him and forget he surfs, but it only occurs to her now to wonder how long he can hold his breath. Maybe she doesn’t need to be down here “rescuing” him.

She pulls at the front of his shirt, and he looks like he's going to fight her for a minute, but then he pushes off too quickly from the floor, shooting past her. She follows, recreating distance that was lost and ending up nearly on the other side of the pool. It doesn't matter, even with the look he’s giving her, dismissive tinged with amusement, at her inability to close any distance between them. Weirdly, she cares less when it's him being dismissive of her. Practice maybe.

“Y’know we had swimming together freshman year,” he says.

She was probably crap at it then too.

“You were a crappy swimmer then too.”

“Fuck off,” she says, and the words feel right to her. “Fuck off,” she says again, just because she likes the sound, the hard F, the determined single syllable.

Mac drags herself out of the pool and flings herself into one of the lounge chairs surrounding it, staring up at the faded cloudy sky. She hears the water as Dick gets out, but she doesn’t look even as he takes the chair next to her. The extra noise in her head is exhausting on days like this.

“You can stay until your clothes dry,” Dick says, trying to sound like an asshole again. All he really sounds like is that he’s afraid to be alone.

“Okay.”


	6. Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick visits Mac again. Not a ton of plot movement, but I found the base of it already written when I was digging through old stuff and it was pretty easy to adapt.

She’s not sure why he’s bloody and sitting outside of her door. He spends most of his time buried beneath the liquid comfort of a bottle, and she’s always found him punchable, but she doesn’t know why he’s in front of _her_ door. One moment of mutual disaster in his pool doesn’t make them friends. His knees are drawn up, elbows hanging off them, but even compacted he still somehow takes up an obscene amount of space. The way his head falls forward she’s half worried about a concussion or something more serious. She doesn’t bother giving him the choice this time, using what strength she has to awkwardly leverage his body up, his weight half falling on her, lanky toned muscles evidently gone useless. Her head barely comes to his shoulder, and it gives her an excellent view of the blood falling from his split lip, his head hanging down within her reach. She brushes her thumb beneath the cut, wiping away the trail of blood and making him lift his head and realise who's helped him, his body jerking. She hadn't expected any reaction to her presence, let alone one so violent, and she loses her grip on him, barely catching his arms again and rescuing him from falling on his ass.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he mumbles, blearily trying to shove her off and nearly bringing them both to the floor in the process.

"What happened to you?" she asks, her tone half accusing.

"Nothing," he says sulkily, pulling out of her grip. He combs his fingers through his hair, smoothing it across his forehead. She’s never seen him evasive before, and for a moment she considers leaving him and going inside. Then, “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” he admits quietly.

Mac sighs and unlocks the door, leaving it open behind her when she steps inside.

Her room looks the same as it had from her doorway when he’d come looking for Parker, and he doesn’t bother to think that it looks like her or any other girly crap like that while she drops her bag on her desk and then steps past it to open the wardrobe the school’d given her, stretching up on tiptoes as she rummages for something on the top shelf. He wants to lay down but settles for sitting heavily on the couch instead. The girl who'd thrown him out of Mac's hallway had gotten him kicked out of his dorm, his own inebriation in front of the housing authorities doing little to help him, if he’s being honest… He prefers to think of it as being all the loud robe girl’s fault, rather than being honest. Mac descends from tiptoes, a white first aid kit clutched in one hand, and he wonders belatedly if he should've remembered to stare at her ass while she'd been trying to reach it. But staring at her ass feels too serious, not a continuation of his usual happily lecherous tendencies. He's thought about her after having her in the house again, when he's just been drinking in the room that is still his room, thought her wanting to to have sex with his brother one thin wall away, his mind half forming images of her needy and desperate before he can drink them away, his dick hardening but untouched in his pants. He isn’t fucking sitting on her bed.

She comes to stand between his legs and after the turn his thoughts have taken, he wonders for a moment if she’s somehow heard him thinking, but her hands are brusque as they open the kit and put it on the arm of the couch next to him, the sting of the disinfectant she puts on his cut business-like and cold, movements impersonal as she carefully puts a Band-Aid over the slight split in his skin. Her eyes examine the bruises on his face, his dilated pupils.

“Why’d you get in a fight?” she asks, her eyes reluctantly curious, hands never stopping as they wrap a towel around an icepack before she deftly pops the inner bag.

He shrugs like an asshole rather than answering, thinking of the guy in their shared class – English or whatever; he hasn’t been back since they left together – the one who made her uncomfortable enough to leave with him. He probably should’ve been able to walk of his own power before trying to tell the guy to fuck off, but it felt surprisingly good. Following the kid from class, drinking and waiting and not really a part of the rest of the world around him. Then the fight, the way it felt to try to inflict some of his damage on someone else, like there’s a finite amount of pain and he could transfer some of what he carries, and the punishment of having his ass kicked in return.

"You could be like one of those sexy nurses," he says instead, her face drawing in on itself in a sort of suspiciously confused disbelief. "I just meant you're good at this kind of thing," he clarifies.

"Oh," she says, clearly still sceptical. She hands him the icepack. "Here, keep this on your face."

"Thanks," he says. "Do you think about him?"

Her whole body freezes. There’s not enough alcohol in the world to prevent him from noticing how dramatic of a change it is. She walks away from him to sit stiffly on her bed and he ignores the blaring warnings in his head to sit next to her, his leg pressing along the length of hers, though his proximity only seems to make her stiffer. She’s so tiny, if Beav did something to her he can maybe get why she wouldn’t want someone so much stronger than her, someone she doesn’t trust sitting next to her.

"I can’t not," she says, trying to hide how tense the answer makes her. He can see it anyway though; she does a shitty job.

"You and him were both so smart. I could tell you thought I was an idiot."

Her face doesn’t entirely disagree with him, and he wants to touch her because of it, still something his brother could've possessed that he can’t, draw his fingers over the same parts of her Cassidy got to memorise.

"I'm sorry," he says. She doesn’t know what he’s sorry for; she doesn’t believe him when he’s this drunk anyway. His hand is next to her knee, and she picks it up, only just now noticing the state of his knuckles. He shivers when she runs her fingers gently over the back of his hand, just barely not touching the raw wounded parts, and she feels something warm and dangerous hum in her core at having the power to affect him with something so simple.

His other hand comes beneath her chin, tilting her face up to meet his eyes, and she can see his intention there before he leans in. Nerves – near to panic but not there yet – kick off in her chest, spreading through her limbs. She thinks to shove his head away, and she thinks about how drunk he is, about how little he has to mean any of this — she hates herself for thinking of Cassidy. But she closes her eyes instead.

He stops before kissing her, smelling the scent of her skin and what’s more likely her shampoo than perfume. Her eyes are closed, her expression not blank but complicated in some way he can’t figure out when his thought processes are this compromised. Maybe even sober he wouldn’t have understood. His hand slides back from her chin to knot in her hair, soft and thick over his fingers. He has the sense she might not let him kiss her again, and he wants all that he can have from this moment while she allows it. There’s a twitch of her brows that might be confusion, but she keeps her eyes closed as he tilts her head back for his own access, his free hand settling on her hip, feeling her body tense and then forcibly relax. He nudges his nose against hers, watching the way her eyelashes delicately flutter against her cheeks, their lips close enough to brush accidentally if he allowed it.

“Can I?” Dick asks, his breath ghosting across her skin. She’s on fire, though she shouldn’t be, for so many reasons, only one of them that she thought she was broken. The more she lets herself think the sicker she feels, like Cassidy will appear and catch them, her stomach tying itself up in knots with a vague feeling of some oncoming punishment. In the room that night there had been her and there had been Cassidy. But she hadn’t known him, hadn’t known what he was. And he’d been inside of her, their skin pressing against each other’s skin, even if they hadn’t been able to make the sex work. She still feels unclean from it, violated though she doesn’t know if she has a right to be, and so, _so_ uncertain. She'd lost Cassidy that night, lost whatever he might've been to her, and lost her ability to trust her own judgment, left only with a gnawing sense of fear. She should tell him to stop, dipping into the same gene pool something she can feel is more than a mistake, but she doesn’t want to think. Not when fire is fighting the fear, and both exist inside her in equal measure, and she usually doesn’t get so much as a spark.

She can feel their lips brush against each other when she asks, voice barely a whisper, “Why are you here, Dick?”

He bites gently at her lower lip before answering, her hands all of a sudden clenched around his arms. She doesn’t know if she’s trying to keep him tethered to her or herself anchored to the world. “You.”

She presses her lips to his and feels his body press urgently into her in response, fingers tightening in her hair further, the almost pain making her spine prickle with need. It makes her feel… not trapped like she expected, but _wanted_. Even though she’s been warped and degraded by other hands; even though Dick wants anything with a vagina and a pulse. Maybe not even the pulse; she’s pretty sure he’d fuck a sex doll.

She’s not sure why his body tightens and freezes so suddenly, but she pulls back as if she’s been burned. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t want to hear that she’s done to him what’s been done to her… and Veronica… and Parker… All of her female friends have experienced sexual violence, and she’s just now realising they blow that “1 in 3 women” statistic out of the water. He’s so drunk, she shouldn’t have touched him, should have known better—

He turns away from her and his shoulders heave, the sound of him vomiting on her floor following. Mac rubs a hand tiredly over her face and then pats what she can reach of his back awkwardly as the noise and smell of him emptying his stomach clog up her room.

"You can stay tonight," she says, standing to go find cleaning supplies. "The couch is free."

“Thank you.” His voice is quiet, subdued, and by the time she comes back to clean up his mess he’s passed out on her bed. She closes her eyes briefly, trying to gather herself after a long day of being in class and surrounded by too many people to feel safe before she bends to the vomit on her floor.


End file.
